16th July 2009, 8:24 PM
Quote:Bush took blame for the recession at the beginning of the decade, which started before his term.
If people say this, then it's misattributed to him, because he had nothing to do with the dotcom bubble bursting. That was an economic progression that isn't really relevant to the guy at the helm, unless there was some kind of regulation that could have prevented it from expanding so fast (not that I'd necessarily agree with that).
Quote: Obama is King of the United States. He has few obstacles in terms of implementing policy. The policies aren't working. Unemployment continues to rise to levels not seen in decades. Mortgage default numbers continue to rise. Consumer confidence is bottoming out. After six months in office, a six months in which he rode a wave of popularity that gave him a free hand to do almost whatever he wanted, he has accomplished nothing except bailing out the institutions that helped create this mess (which, I understand, is just following an already bad precedent).
The problem with him not being able to accomplish enough is that he's willing to reach across the aisle and compromise on too many issues. I think he should utilize the power he has, but probably not in ways that you would want, as you and I disagree politically. On the other hand, you should probably at least be thankful that he's willing to work with congressmen in the pockets of lobbyists who really prevent anything really meaningful from happening, because he'd be doing things even worse in your eyes. Did that sentence make sense? It reads a bit confusing...ly... me talk pretty one day.
Quote:After six months, I expect some kind of progress. This recession's been in progress for almost two years, so it's not as though we're waiting for an initial drop-off to finish. A President who is working on racking up the largest national debt in the history of the free world really should have some kind of positive result for us to see by this point.
Unfortunately, there's only so much the president can do. I'd like him to cut taxes for the middle class and increase taxes on the wealthy and large corporations, personally, but that seems like another campaign promise he'll renege at this point.
In any case, from what I've been hearing, the contraction of the economy is indeed slowing down. I'd be interested it hear what kind of effects the stimulus package and other legislation has played a hand in this, but even the investment in infrastructure can take a while to yield meaningful results. I'd be interested in an objective analysis that made the case of either a success or failure of Obama's efforts.
At least he isn't spending billions on cool new military toys when hardly anyone in the world is a threat to us to begin with. Which is what this topic is about. But I've heard that Clinton and Bush tried to do the same and failed, so I don't necessarily expect Lockheed Martin to lose this time.